


A Thing of Convenience

by JennaCupcakes



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Dirty Talk, Francis Can Have a Little Top!James (As a Treat), Francis Crozier's Arctic Glow-Up, Fuckbuddies To Lovers, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:53:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29755770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaCupcakes/pseuds/JennaCupcakes
Summary: After Francis dries out, James finds himself confronted with a new captain—one he might grow to love.
Relationships: Francis Crozier/James Fitzjames
Comments: 36
Kudos: 98
Collections: The Terror Bingo





	A Thing of Convenience

**Author's Note:**

> For my Terror bingo square ‘a vivid description’, which I interpreted to mean dirty talk. That’s a bingo, lads!

It started out as a thing of convenience—a hand lent, support offered—but James knew it would not remain so clean, so confined, the first time he watched Francis spill over his hand when he was pulling the man off in his bunk: There was a moment where his face went slack and unguarded with pleasure that fixed itself in James’s mind like the hook of a fishing line, caught.

Francis had been two weeks off the drink, then, or rather it had been two weeks since the two of them, coughing up soot-coloured phlegm, had emerged from the ruins of James’s only bright idea on this expedition. The return of sunlight was just beginning to move from stochastic to immutable fact. Francis had ordered the reinstation of regular meetings between expedition leaders and officers on both ships while not quite meeting James’s eye, with the self-conscious air of a man attempting to rectify a mistake he’d not admitted to yet. James felt some modicum of relief and a wealth of trepidation—for what if Francis, dried out, still turned out to be less than the man they needed?

Of course he still went to _Terror_. Firstly, Francis was formally in command again, and James wouldn’t disobey an order from a superior officer. Hell, he’d not even sunk so low after Francis had hit him, though it had been a close thing and the fact that Francis remembered very little of it had likely worked in his favour. Secondly, however, James—well, the truth was, he knew precisely the sort of talent he himself had for command. A fine thing in good weather, a pretty thing under a Southern sun. Nothing hardened enough to withstand these climes, no. He needed Francis for that.

It had been a small thing, then, to move from one’s own recognised need to the recognition of that need within someone else. Their falling into bed together was little more than a practicality: for sometimes a touch was needed to ground oneself, and Francis had so obviously not been touched in so very long. He’d looked frighteningly helpless, thrusting his prick into the tight hold James kept on it, clasping a hand to James’s arm hard enough to bruise (or so James would tell himself later; it had in fact not seemed very hard in the moment and would not have been memorable but for the ripe blue and brown imprint of fingers James found there the next day.) Even more enticing had been his breathless, choked-off gasps when James muttered his encouragement in Francis’s ear (‘ _Yes’_ and ‘ _right there_ ’ and ‘ _harder, Francis, I know you have it in you—_ ‘), the force of his release leaving him shaking and insensible for a minute while Francis ran his hand up and down James’s arm.

A thing of convenience.

James wasn’t even sure he _liked_ Francis. Not that it was a prerequisite for a good fucking, but James had often had a hard time separating matters of the heart and matters of the flesh if he so much as knew the fellow’s name. To fall into bed with someone for the comforting feeling of skin only, repeatedly, was uncharacteristic. To do so with a man he would have sworn he despised less than a month ago was even more so.

A sign of the times, then.

James had relinquished command—despite his lingering reservations about Francis—with a deep-seated relief, the sort that made defeat palatable. He might not have succeeded, but at least it was over. Still, the disgust he felt every time he looked in the mirror or over the ice to the black and charred spot that marked the calamity to which he had led his men cheerfully and triumphantly, would not abate. That was why he went to Francis’s bunk when the man offered—offered first with a series of convoluted gestures and signals he no doubt thought were very clear yet subtle and then, as they grew more accustomed to each other, with a raised eyebrow and a cocking of his head. It left James’s mouth dry without fail. It also left him wondering if, perhaps, he was further down this path of decline than he’d thought—but to be wanted in any way was more than James thought he still deserved.

At least the blood at his hairline told him where this path would end for him.

* * *

Today, then, was quiet by comparison. James had come to _Terror_ in the morning for a meeting of the officers, then stayed behind for lunch as well. Francis would perhaps never look entirely comfortable in the wardroom, but James was even pleased to see his nervous smile. When Dundy and their marines were getting ready to head back to _Erebus_ , Francis stopped James with a question about the crew manifest.

“ _Terror’s_ position is still precarious. More men will injure themselves the longer they stay aboard. We should talk about possible solutions.”

James looked back at Dundy, who was levelling him a look James took to mean that if he was considering bringing back Terrors, he’d best be bringing back a lieutenant as well, or he needn’t bother coming back at all. He nodded in acknowledgement—Francis only looked slightly nonplussed at the silent exchange between them.

“Of course,” James said.

He felt a little bad for wondering if this was simply a pretext for a quick tug before both of them returned to their duties. He stayed behind in the wardroom with Francis while the other officers got dressed or went about their duties, but Francis made no move to relocate them either to the great cabin or his berth- When they were, at last, alone—not counting Jopson, who was so unobtrusive as to be discounted—Francis sighed deeply.

“I hate to ask this of you, James, after I left you with all my mess. But it’s necessary. Whatever you need, I promise you’ll have it this time. Just say the words.”

James felt oddly tight about the breast. For Francis to offer James help now, when they had significantly fewer men than last November—well, not that an additional lieutenant would go amiss, but to James it felt more like Francis was doubting his capacity for leadership.

“How about I take a third of your Terrors and you give me Lieutenant Hodgson? He and Henry can reminisce about China to their heart’s content.”

“You won’t join them?”

The joke landed poorly. James forced a chuckle. He thought about a pair of blue eyes, trained on him with well-deserved disdain across the wardroom table. He thought about the twinge in his side, a weather-warning from an old scar.

“I think I’ll abstain,” he said.

Francis examined the woodgrain with great interest.

They did end up tugging each other off; James pressing Francis against the bulkhead and Francis panting, open-mouthed, his head tipped back. James looked down between their bodies where he held Francis’s prick in his hand; watched the flushed skin disappear and reappear in his fist. Besides the man’s hands and face, it was the only part of Francis’s body he’d seen uncovered, and James mused on that while he listened to Francis’s breath shorten. The sounds of a restrained man on the brink. When James felt the splatter of Francis’s seed cover his hand, Francis pressed his eyes closed.

“Ah, Jesus, _James_ —”

And James, who possessed little good sense and less self-control, leaned forward and muttered in his ear: “Yes, Francis, get yourself filthy with it,” something he would have regretted not two seconds later had Francis not shoved at him with a sudden urgency, pinning James against the bulkhead and pawing at his prick with a firm hand until James was unable to stand, grasping at Francis’s shoulder for support while he spent with a happy burst over Francis’s hand and waistcoat.

His complement of Terrors arrived two days later under the leadership of Lieutenant Hodgson. Dundy had emptied Lieutenant Fairholme’s quarters that morning, under James’s instruction to pass along any letters or journals that might be safeguarded for his family, and to stash the rest of his possessions away in the hold. In a couple of weeks when the weather cleared, they would prepare the arduous task of stripping the ships of anything useful, an iconoclasm of survival. But it began here in their cabins, with their own possessions and the question of what they could bear to part with.

Where the first move to Erebus had been an exodus, a horde of little more than boys seeking shelter from a vengeful God, this one was mannered, more orderly by far. The men knew the rules that they had to abide by; the standard James held them to, and Hodgson was uncomplicated and pleasant to work with. Together, they had all the men settled in before supper. Even Dundy looked pleased.

James had ordered a change in their seating arrangements post carnivale. The glaring, blazing absence of Stephen Stanley had thoroughly ruined his appetite. Now that Hodgson was here, _Erebus’s_ wardroom was further altered, and the memory made more palatable. One day, James might even be able to think fondly of the doctor again—he had saved James’s life, after all, before he had sought to erase it with the clinical detachment of one who was used to holding life in one’s hand.

* * *

He went over to _Terror_ two or three times a week, or Francis came to him. He always inquired after James’s health first, and James concealed a twitch of his hand to his hairline. He hated the feeling of being mollycoddled, but he feared the thought of being alone with this more. One day, soon, he might confide in Francis that his prospects were looking worse by the day.

Their meetings didn’t always end in sex—if one could call their quick fumblings that. Neither of them was that young anymore. But often enough, Francis would stick around, or he’d ask James if he wanted another cup of tea after all ship’s business was seen to.

Francis grew into his role like a branch, grafted onto a tree: all the more impressive to witness for the difficulty he’d had to overcome. James watched the pallor of his recovery give way to a healthier complexion, like something out of a picture book on explorers. When he came to _Erebus_ one day with his hair freshly cut, James nearly swallowed his tongue in an effort not to tell him how well it suited him. From his mouth, it would have sounded disingenuous.

They spoke of leaving, now.

The inevitability that James had glimpsed, and that Francis had confirmed on that terrible night of first sunrise became their fate without much further discussion. There was no other way. Perhaps Francis had always seen it and had tried to warn them. In hindsight, it certainly seemed that way to James.

On the nights he spent alone, James looked at maps of Canada and tried not to feel discouraged by the distances they displayed. Eight hundred miles to the first outpost of civilization. Francis didn’t ask James for his estimation of their chances, but if he had, James would have told him bluntly: It was impossible. He’d only made it through Syria by relying on the goodwill of others at every turn. Out here, they would be lucky to meet one group of Netsilik.

Their carpenters fitted their boats with runners. Francis and James examined them, and neither of them mentioned their weight. Lieutenant Irving updated his tally of their provisions. They reduced rations again, and neither of them mentioned that it wouldn’t be enough. But James was certain Francis was thinking about the same things he was thinking of when he pressed his head to James’s shoulder later; sank his teeth into James’s collar. In moments like this, James often wondered how they remained standing at all with his knees weak from arousal and Francis shaking under his hands. Perhaps they were keeping each other upright.

Easter came and went, marked by a dinner of the officers. Irving entertained them by demonstrating the use of a formula calculating the date of Easter for any given year a man called out, even many years into the future—1849, 1850, 1851, and the wardroom cheered and demanded more outlandish numbers.

1855\. April 8th. Would they still be alive?

1860\. April 8th. Dundy called out a foul. Irving insisted, showing him the proof. Would someone have come looking for them?

1900\. April 15th. What would be left of them, if no one did?

2000\. April 23rd. Would somebody remember them?

More and more often these days, James felt like he was sitting in a room of ghosts, and he the only man who was still alive. With the laughter of the wardroom echoing around him, James slept poorly that night.

* * *

Francis came over to _Erebus_ the next evening without previously announcing himself.

James had already taken his dinner with George and Dundy. George had lamented the absence of _Terror’s_ hand organ, while Dundy had remarked that surely it was fortuitous for the ears of the sailors abord that _Erebus_ did not carry such an instrument, which had sparked a debate on the merits of music for education that had lasted all through dinner. Now, blessedly, James was in his cabin, finishing up the day’s logkeeping, when a knock from Bridgens roused him.

“Captain Crozier to see you, sir.”

James blinked once, twice. He did not remember an appointment with the captain tonight. Bridgens’ face loomed patiently in the doorway. He’d had to endure the odd lapse of memory over the course of the last weeks. James refused to think of it as anything more than a symptom of the amount of work put on him.

“Send him in.”

Bridgens nodded. “Should I make some tea?”

James considered the hour, and the likely reason for Francis’s visit.

“You needn’t bother. That will be all, thank you.”

Bridgens bade him goodnight. A minute later, Francis shuffled into the great cabin, already out of his slops, and gave a nod to the door of James’s berth.

“Did I pull you out of bed?”

“No, no.”

James wanted to rise, then decided against it. Space was scant enough. It would only make him think too hard on what to do with his hands while he stood a mere metre from Francis.

“Is there something you wanted?”

“Yes, I—of course.” Francis cleared his throat. “I was looking for a map. It had—I’m certain it had Ross’s survey of the Adelaide peninsula. I couldn’t find it on _Terror_.”

“It couldn’t wait till morning?”

James raised an eyebrow. He should feel bad for teasing Francis so, but Lord knew he had few pleasures left and it _was_ a terribly flimsy excuse. Francis was not normally so priggish.

“No,” Francis said, “Yes. I suppose.”

He looked around the cabin—perhaps searching for the map after all. The drink did strange things to people, altering them invariably in some cases. The map might have seemed urgent to him in the moment, and now he was trying to come up with a reason as to why.

“Have you gone through his things yet?” Francis asked.

James stared at him, and Francis stared back while the gears turned in James’s head.

“You mean—”

“Wait,” Francis said. “That sounded—what I meant to say—” He pinched the bridge of his nose and suddenly James recognised the tense set of his shoulders: He was exhausted, weighed down by his responsibilities. “I had to go through Evans’s things today. His mates packed it all away, but we have to make decisions—”

He trailed off. James nodded.

“—about what we can take with us,” James finished. “I’ve been thinking the same.”

Francis had been examining his hands with great interest, but he looked up at James, then, and met his eyes with a relief so acute that James had to look away.

“Yes. It’s not enough to carry the memory of the men we lost out of this place. Their families deserve something to hold on to. Something to mourn.”

“And yet, there’s wisdom in travelling lightly,” James said carefully.

“Wisdom, or cruelty.” Francis scoffed—a quiet puff of breath that seemed to wrack his body. “It’s my fault that we lost them in the first place. You’d have me kill them twice over.”

The lamplight betrayed him. At eye level, the whale oil caught on the wet glimmer of unspilled tears in Francis’s eyes. James raised his hands.

“Peace, Francis.”

Francis breathed out hard. He was a man of such intense physical presence that his very emotions seemed to shake the ship. Now, finally, James got up to grasp him gently by the arms. _Is that why you came here tonight?_ That was the one question he couldn’t ask. Preposterous, to assume that Francis would come to _Erebus_ to lean on him, James Fitzjames, architect of their misery.

“I might help you take your mind of it,” he said instead.

Francis’s gaze was on him, boring hot in its intensity. “Jesus, James.”

James shrugged, though it fell far of the intended mark of nonchalance. “You came all this way. The rest of the ship is abed. Why not make the most of it?”

It might help him sleep, at least. His joints kept him up at night now—someone of his stature was simply not made to squeeze himself into a bunk this size for years on end. Relieving some tension might prove the ideal counterweight.

Francis pursed his lips. His eyes were stuck on James’s face as though looking for a clue.

“Why not,” he repeated.

James had seldom heard someone less enthusiastic at the prospect of getting his rocks off, but Francis was melancholy on a good day.

He released Francis’s arms to tug at his cravat and stock. He was headed to bed anyway; they might as well get comfortable. He rolled his neck in satisfaction when the thing was off, flexing his shoulders, arms, and fingers. His spine popped twice—a reminder to not hunch over the logbook so much.

Francis was staring at him.

James raised a hand, then paused, halfway to Francis’s cravat—considering.

“Would you like to take that off?”

Francis’s eyes flickered from James’s face to his hand. He blinked twice. James watched the moment hang in the suspense of Francis’s indecision.

He’d not get an answer from Francis, he realised. With a deft pull, James loosened the cravat. At the brush of James’s fingers to his chin, Francis’s eyes slipped shut. The knowledge that this Francis existed—this man who didn’t shirk a gentler touch, who might even welcome it—was nearly too much for James. Had that man always been there? Had the drink made his loneliness bearable, even as it exacerbated it? Did he feel like a raw nerve now, without something to dull the edge?

He pulled the silk fabric away slowly, then—because he was feeling bold—undid the top button of Francis’s shirt. Then—because he couldn’t help himself—another one. Francis’s neck at this hour of the day was slightly stubbled, and red where the fabric had chafed. James ran the back of a finger down the line of his throat and felt Francis swallow.

This was different. James had touched Francis’s prick near a dozen times now, but this was more intimate. His eyes fell to Francis’s lips.

Would Francis allow it? This, he would not presume—he needed Francis’s invitation, his permission.

“Come to bed with me,” he said.

They settled in James’s bunk, facing each other. James would admit now that he loved this most: being so close to another man that there was hardly space to move, breathing the same air, every shift of a limb echoed by another body. More than the release that their mutual favour brought, it was this that he craved.

Francis’s hand was on him, frigging him slowly, which only served to exacerbate the treacly-thick feeling in James’s lungs. If he wasn’t careful, he’d say something foolish about how fond he’d grown of Francis these past months, how very glad he was to have found in Francis a man who might lead them out of here. How much he needed Francis to make up for his own shortcomings.

He didn’t. He moved Francis’s shirt out of the way, watching the pale moon of Francis’s face and the needful breaths that escaped his mouth. He caressed the length of Francis’s hard prick, covered by his smallclothes, and watched Francis’s eyes slip shut in quiet bliss. He drew him out slowly, savouring the knowledge that Francis’s breath grew unsteady at every accidental brush to his hardness.

They’d never had so much time, or they’d never allowed themselves the luxury. James touched Francis slowly, teasingly. He wanted to draw this out, see how long Francis would stay here, in James’s bunk. Perhaps he could keep him forever like this, a gentler version of a great man.

“Your _hands_ , James…”

The words escaped Francis in a low groan.

“Those fingers, I—knew they must be good for something, _oh_ —”

James felt himself blush, suddenly self-conscious even though Francis had his eyes screwed shut. The implication that Francis had been watching him, had been wondering—it spoke of more than convenience. James felt his pulse quicken.

“Tell me how to please you,” James murmured, leaning closer to Francis so he could press the words into his ear with his lips. Francis permitted the contact—almost a kiss, and so James did it again, with the lightest scrape of teeth over the pale shell of Francis’s ear.

“Just… just keep going.”

James was an expert of his own pleasure, a necessity for a man like him who could not always entrust another with his desires. Francis, despite possessing perhaps more ample opportunity, seemed always taken aback by his body’s reactions to James’s hands and mouth. James desperately wanted to know if he ever touched himself with curiosity instead of just the desire to finish.

He took a hold of Francis’s hand on his prick and brought it up to his mouth. He kissed Francis’s palm, kissed the fingers, then—when no protest was forthcoming—gently nipped at a digit, closing his lips around it. He was desperately hard, but he wanted to see Francis finish first.

The touch of James’s hand had Francis writhing in the bunk now, chasing the pressure of his hand, arching of the mattress, seeking friction. His socks found no purchase and he slipped, falling back against the mattress, whining.

“I’ll get you there,” James promised. “You have me Francis, I’ll—”

“ _More_ ,” Francis demanded.

James sped up the movements of his hand, feeling that it must be near painful but not wanting to question Francis. Francis loosened a groan from some deep place inside of him. He grasped for something to hold onto—his fingers wound themselves into James’s hair, tugging at the curls, which brought a sharp flare of pain that James could feel as a hot pulse in his prick.

Francis was trembling, shifting, biting the meat of his free hand and thrusting his hips to meet James’s strokes. Sweat gleamed on his forehead, plastering the feathery strands to his skin.

“Come on,” James whispered. “Let go, you’re nearly there—”

Indeed, Francis let loose a sound that no sensible man would wish to own. He turned his face to James, a helpless expression on his face.

“I can’t, I can’t, James, I—”

“It’s alright, it’s alright,” James shushed him. “What do you need?”

Francis arched off the bed again, then let out a frustrated cry. “I don’t know, _God_ —”

“What do you need, Francis?”

James gentled the movements of his hand, but the sound Francis made at that—high and entirely incoherent—led him to reconsider.

“I _don’t know_.” His face was red—from exertion or shame, James had no way of knowing. “Please, James.”

“Anything, just—just tell me _what_.”

James would offer himself wholly, if Francis would only say the words. Even here, in bed with the man, he could not let go of the last ounce of shame that told him he’d fall in Francis’s favour if he revealed how much he’d willingly give to him.

The look Francis levelled at him briefly robbed James of his breath.

“Please, I need you. I need you. Inside.”

James felt his pulse triple. “You want me to fuck you?”

The blush that coloured Francis’s face was a blotchy red—charming, like that gap between his teeth, it had a boyish quality, even as it made James want to pounce on him.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll not ask again if you don’t want to but God—”

“Hush, Francis.”

James kissed his forehead—he felt entitled to that privilege now that the man had declared he would like James to put his prick up his arse.

“Promised I’d take care of you, didn’t I?”

There was something in the relief that smoothed out the lines on Francis’s forehead that James recognised—the ability to pass on a mantle to someone else, to give oneself over to competent hands. James’s heart ached to think that he’d been placing his burdens on Francis’s shoulders as well, with no regard as to whether the man was fit enough to bear them. He’d been too eager to return to the safe position of second.

Some grease was procured from a drawer. James found it hard to breathe for the excitement singing in his veins.

They undressed Francis together, as much as was necessary at least—James pulled off his socks with gentle hands while Francis unfastened his trousers and helped James slip them off, together with his smalls. He had lovely, stout legs. If James were a bolder man, he might have put his mouth to them. As things stood, he urged them up, stroking up and down Francis’s calves. Francis’s muscles were tense. He pressed his thumb to the knots, felt them relax and release after rubbing a few determined circles into them. Francis groaned.

In truth, James had to ground himself, or the sight before him would strike him dumb with want: Francis, bare from the waist down, was a specimen to make his mouth water. His prick—hard and flushed with Francis’s desire—stood proud between his thighs, bollocks nestled between them. James wished dearly to put his face there. Then, deciding he was about to abandon shame, he did.

The smell of Francis was strong. He heard the aborted grunt of Francis above him as James’s hair brushed his prick and Francis’s whole body twitched. James ran his nose up the seam between his stones, brought his tongue out to taste the skin at the base of Francis’s prick. All while Francis was making urgent noises above him.

“Not quite where you want me, love?”

It was easier to speak when he didn’t have to look at Francis and wonder if Francis would still look at him come morning.

“Is there somewhere you’d rather have me?”

“You know damn well—” Francis managed, rather breathless and un-captainly. It made James smile.

“As your second, I will aid you in all things, but I must be instructed. Where would you like me to attend to you?”

He risked raising his head enough so he could glimpse at Francis’s blush, bright and angry, spreading all the way down his neck. He’d felt rather silly, but it seemed that his words were having quite an effect on Francis.

“My—God, James, my—”

James cocked his head, feigning trouble understanding. Francis looked ready to jump up and strangle him if only he could muster the barest sensation in his legs or arms.

“My arse, I want your fingers up my arse. Are you happy now— _ahhh_.”

What would, no doubt, have been a fine tirade on Francis’s part was interrupted when James put a thumb to his lovely little hole, carefully massaging the muscle. Francis’s head fell back against the pillow, his mouth open. James reached for the grease.

He slipped the first finger inside, and was welcomed by the tight squeeze of Francis’s muscles. In fact, his whole body tensed, and Francis brought his hand up to bite at it again, no doubt to stifle the sound that wanted to force its way out of his throat. James shifted his position so that he could lie next to Francis while touching him. He pressed a kiss to his nose.

“Relax. Let me in, love. There’s a good lad.”

Francis whined at the praise, but his muscles relaxed, and he permitted James’s finger to probe further, sink deeper into the warm heat of him, made slick by the grease on James’s finger.

“That’s it,” James muttered, “Doesn’t it feel so good when you don’t fight it?”

Francis nodded frantically. “I can—I can take more—God.”

“Greedy.”

James punctuated the word by sheathing his finger all the way. Francis’s prick twitched

“Oh,” he said.

James pulled his finger out, then thrust it back in, making sure to keep the angle consistent so that he could strike the same spot as before. Francis’s moan, this time, was near too loud before James swallowed it into his mouth. He kept on drilling in his finger, pressed his tongue into Francis’s mouth while he had the advantage, and felt Francis shake. When he broke the kiss, Francis’s lips were shining wet, and his prick had left a clear mess of fluid on his belly.

“Will you do it now?”

Francis’s eyes looked very bright, even in the low light. He regarded James with a clear-eyed hopefulness that was bordering on manic.

“Yes,” James said, though he’d meant to say no, just to see if he could get Francis begging. It seemed he himself had little enough patience left.

He kicked off his trousers with haste, slicked up his prick with some more grease. Francis was watching his every movement, hungry like a hawk. He spread his legs further when James came to him.

Here, at last, James would have had to abandon every pretence of mere convenience: From the moment he’d glanced at Francis in that carnivale tent, he’d carried within himself a certainty that he’d found the missing puzzle piece of his life, the key he needed to unlock the secret room in his heart. When Francis looked back at him now, James was certain he saw the same.

He gripped his prick and brought it to Francis’s hole. Hard as it was, it was a small thing to press forward and breach the tight muscles of Francis’s opening. James found himself engulfed by a tight, slick, clutching sort of heat, the kind that made him want to abandon sense and politeness and bury himself in Francis in one go.

Instead, he rolled his hips slowly, mindful of the look on Francis’s face. Francis’s instinct seemed to be to close his legs, so James held them open and rolled his hips again, and Francis gasped.

“Good?” James asked.

Francis met his gaze with bleary eyes. “I—God, James, don’t you know—”

James kissed him. “I do,” he muttered between kisses, “I do.”

Buried almost all the way inside Francis, he felt overcome. Surely no one before him had felt this way. No one had felt so filthy yet so complete.

The first thrust had them both groan in unison. The second time James sunk his prick into Francis, he had to lean forward to kiss him. To be so perfectly ensconced in someone should have felt foreign, and yet James felt nothing but a deep sense of how right it all was that he should be here with Francis, as Francis’s second, so that they could share this as well. Neither of them would have to bear a burden alone.

“You take me so well, Francis.”

James kissed his cheeks, his nose, his eyelids, his mouth.

“Look how well you open for me, look how wet you are for me.”

A high and keening whine from Francis. He reacted so beautifully to James’s words; it only spurred James on further, settling into a rhythm that sought to fuck Francis through the bunk. He picked up one of Francis’s legs, slung it over his shoulder. Francis’s eyes flew open, and a line of fluid spurted from his prick. James drew his fingers through it, then brought them to Francis’s mouth.

“Open up.”

Francis did so unquestioningly, and James swore as he sucked his fingers into his mouth. Francis’s mouth was a velvet cavern of warm suction, and James felt dizzy.

“I’ll fill you, Francis. I’ll fill you everywhere you let me. You won’t have to be empty.”

Who could have known that one day the words from his mouth would see Francis flushed with something other than anger? He let go of James’s fingers and James braced himself on both arms so he could fuck Francis deeper, harder.

“Do it, James. By God, do it.”

James cursed at the image in his mind of Francis’s hole dripping with his seed, loose and leaking. Would Francis permit his fingers again? James wanted to feel how many he could get in now that he’d opened Francis up. How long he could keep him. If he could wring a second orgasm from him, after his first.

He knew he was close. He fumbled for Francis’s prick again, determined to see Francis spill before he did. Francis’s hands came up to clutch at James’s side when he did, his nails digging into James’s skin. James hissed, pressing his thumb under the head of Francis’s prick. He rubbed it in small circles and Francis keened, the muscles of his arse seizing and spasming around James. James pressed his prick into Francis one more time, deep as it would go, then felt the warmth of Francis’s release covering his hand, Francis jerking wildly beneath him.

There was no earthly way James could stop himself now, not with the muscles of Francis’s arse strangling his prick. Two, three more thrusts and he could feel the precise gathering of his own end. Close, now, and nearly there—James’s eyes slipped shut as he felt it pulse out of himself, buried deep in Francis’s arse.

The aftershocks left him unable to move for a full minute—every time he shifted, a new and delicious pleasure rippled through him, or Francis would make a noise of protest at the shifting of James above him.

“Francis,” he said finally, when he had breath and spit enough to speak. “How—are you—?”

He lifted himself on his arms to be able to look at Francis. Much to his relief, there was a smile on Francis’s face—the private, impish smile that James had only recently gotten to know.

“I feel very fine.”

“Oh. Good.” James eased himself out of Francis with care, wincing at the mess between them. “I should hate to make you feel—if I was perhaps too rough—”

“Not at all. You were a perfect gentleman.”

James thought that a gentleman would not have said half of the things he’d told Francis, but then Francis had seemed to enjoy them. He swung himself out of the bunk and went in search of something to clean them both. When he returned to the bunk with a flannel, Francis had stretched himself out on James’s bunk, looking quite at home there. The sight of his legs and prick, even sated as it was, struck James dumb for a moment.

“You—” He shook his head and passed Francis the cloth while he sat down on the side of the bunk and went in search of his socks that had disappeared somewhere in the legs of his trousers. “I enjoyed myself a lot.”

When he dared to look at Francis again, Francis was smiling: a more subdued affair than his grin, this one seemed to express an emotion that James, at his worst, had doubted Francis was even capable of—contentment. 

“I… as well.”

Francis sounded stunned, as though still doubting his own emotions.

James felt they should leave it at that. He didn’t.

“I meant it Francis. You have me. I wouldn’t want either of us having to shoulder a burden alone now.”

Francis leaned forward and pressed James’s hand, his thumb rubbing over the back of it. James looked down at their intertwined hands.

“Then we are of one mind, James.”

He couldn’t name the feeling that stoppered up his throat, then. It was only later when Francis had departed for Terror, when James had dressed himself for bed and was lying under the covers that still smelled of Francis, eyes fixed to the dark ceiling because he couldn’t settle the circling of his thoughts, that the pieces suddenly slotted together and he realised, with a wrenching sort of clarity, that he’d fallen in love.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Easter 1848 was technically after they abandoned ships. But then I couldn’t have had my thematically appropriate fun with Gauß’s easter formula. The Easter dates I took from [this website](https://www.dr-mikes-math-games-for-kids.com/easter-date-tables.html?century=19) after about five minutes of trying to do the math myself.
> 
> I’m also on on [tumblr](https://veganthranduil.tumblr.com/) or [twitter](https://twitter.com/veganthranduil) as veganthranduil. If you enjoyed this, please consider leaving me a comment.


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